What’s so Great About Cloud-Native Applications?

What’s so Great About Cloud-Native Applications?

Heard of Cloud-Native Applications (aka Cloud Apps)? This has been a buzz word for a few years now – since Matt Stine’s 2013 Pivotal talk, in fact. Think of them as the next generation of web or mobile applications.

In this article, I’m going to talk about what makes Cloud
Apps so great.

What is a Cloud-Native App?

The fundamental concept behind a Cloud App is that it’s
designed for, packaged for and deployed to Cloud infrastructure.

(In case you’re also wondering what Cloud infrastructure is
– think of it as virtual hardware and services that are offered to, and managed
for you by a Cloud hosting provider, such as AWS, Azure of Google Cloud etc.)

1) Scalability

Traditional applications have a dedicated number of servers
that handle requests for data. These are usually fixed, and when more customers
are using your app, the same servers need to handle the increased number of
requests.

So, what happens if the number of requests gets to a level where the servers can’t keep up? The app crashes …

Cloud Apps are built with scalability in mind. They are
designed from the ground up to be packaged and deployed onto Cloud servers and
infrastructure.

Also, extra technical consideration is made to ensure that
all components of the application are scalable, not just the server.

File storage, database integration, messaging, and
authentication are some of the other components that can have a degree of
scalability built into them. All the major Cloud providers offer services that
can cater for these needs. And by building a Cloud App on top of these
services, it will have a reliable level of scalability embedded from day one.

2) More Cost Effective

From a financial perspective, a Cloud Application has one major
advantage.

Cloud providers nearly always offer a pay-as-you-go billing
option for their services. Given that Cloud Apps are built on these services,
you only pay for the hosting and services that you use.

Due to the scalable nature of Cloud infrastructure, machines
are automatically spun up and shut down depending on how much traffic an
application is receiving. With pay-as-you-go billing, you are only charged for
the time that a machine is in use.

Compare this to a scenario where you have a set of machines
that are always running, regardless of how much traffic your application is
receiving.

Here, you will be charged even if your machines are only
being leveraged at 10% of their capacity.

In the case of Cloud Apps, though, that excess computing
power would simply be shut down, and you’d save money.

3) Less Vulnerable to Hardware Issues

It’s impossible to avoid the fact that hardware fails. So,
it’s prudent to set things up with the understanding that your hardware will fail.

In the traditional case, where a web application is hosted
on an on-premises collection of servers, one (or all) of the servers could fail
due to hardware issues.

This could be catastrophic, if appropriate contingencies are
not in place. Fixing the hardware issues could take days, if not weeks.

With Cloud Apps, hardware failures have been factored in
from the outset.

If a virtual server hosting your application fails, it will
be replaced immediately by another one – automatically. This factor alone will
likely help a lot of product managers sleep better at night, making it one of
the most attractive benefits of Cloud Apps.

4) Easier to Develop With

With the evolution of Cloud hosting have come enhancements of
the tooling that facilitates Cloud Apps. This means that it’s become super easy
to package, deploy and maintain Cloud Apps.

Although a lot of this tooling can be used with traditional
applications also, it has been primarily built for Cloud Apps.

DevOps has been developed round this tooling. It’s led the
way by allowing developers to manage the deployment of their applications
themselves. This frees up resources and ultimately reduces operating costs.

Automated app deployment processes are now the norm.

These automated processes mean that less user errors occur,
and project managers can initiate app releases themselves with the click of a
button.

5) More Options to Enhance Security

The demand for and expectation of security in online
applications have been rising sharply over the recent decade.

Cloud providers typically default all new infrastructure and
services to the highest level of security.

They also offer many services which solely handle security
and authentication for Cloud Apps. These services also offer a higher level of security
than the traditional applications.

In addition, the underlying infrastructure is updated regularly
with the latest security patches. This, again, removes the burden from the
operations team and is a far more reliable option than having to depend on
manual updates.

Summing Up

The speed, security, reliability and scalability of Cloud
Apps have made them the far more attractive option for new web or mobile app
projects.

Cloud-Native Apps offer tech-focused businesses the ability
to maintain an online presence that impresses customers and attracts new ones.

Cloud Apps are the evolutionary result of traditional web
applications, and they are only going to become more powerful, sophisticated
and reliable.

Although some circumstances may require the running of on-premise
servers, migrating to the Cloud will be the better option in the majority of
cases.

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